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BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY ............................................... 1

Introduction .......................................................... 1
Project Design: An Overview of the Western Nigerian Settlement Schemes 2
The Land and the People ............................................... 4

Why should development planners and scholars of
development be concerned about women's roles and gender
differences?

No project that expresses its goals in terms of
production gains or increased benefits can afford to ignore
the economic potential and needs of one-half of the
population. Guidelines for the design and evaluation of
development projects sensitive to women's roles have often
been applied only to a narrow range of "women's projects."
Our view at the Population Council is that all development
efforts could be improved if the differential impact on both
class and gender groupings were considered.

The series of case studies on Women's Roles and Gender
Differences in Development was developed to demonstrate that
such analyses are not only essential, but also feasible
within existing structures.

These case studies make clear how inattention to
women's roles and gender differences is played out as
projects are implemented. Excluding gender as a variable,
or limiting women's roles to the welfare sector, results in
unintended effects, sometimes positive, but more frequently
negative. Many of the stated objectives of the development
schemes under study were not attained because project
designs were predicated on an incomplete picture of the
society to be served and drawn into participation.

The case studies draw largely from material that
existed originally in other forms (such as exceptional Ph.D
dissertations). From these materials has been extracted the
"case:" (1) salient aspects of the culture and society in
which the development project was placed, (2) the project
dynamics themselves, and finally, (3) an assessment of gains
and losses in different goal areas. To complement
individual case studies, this series for planners includes
monographs on broader development phenomena whose effects
are seen outside the confines of specific development
schemes. As of this writing, the series includes two
monographs, one dealing with the effects of male out-
migration on rural women's roles and a second on the impact
of different styles of agrarian reform on women's roles and
productivity.

These materials are intended to be used by students of
development and professionals in the field, including those
at the highest planning levels. By providing examples of
how individual development schemes have operated vis-a-vis
gender, we hope they stimulate in the reader an interest in
exploring what these effects might be in development
projects being designed, implemented, or evaluated. For
some time now, an understanding of class dynamics has been

seen as essential in d signing projects for successful
outcomes. We have the same conviction regarding the
importance of understanding gender differentials. We hope
that this study series positively advances that notion and
provides its readers with new skills and insights by raising
questions and suggesting alternatives.

We wish to thank each of our individual authors for the
exhaustive work they have put into forming their material
into case studies. We ,commend Marilyn Kohn for her fine
editorial work in finalizing the material. Finally, we
acknowledge with appreciation the role of the Ford
Foundation in providing support for developing three of the
five cases and both monographs in this series.

Judith Bruce
Associate
The Population
Council

Ingrid Palmer
Editor of the
Series

SUMMARY
BACKGROUND

Settlement schemes have been a subject of much
controversy. Questions have been raised about the costs
involved, their ostensible goals, policy implications, and
their viability as a development option. However, few
studies to date have taken special account of women's roles
and experiences in these settlement schemes. By examining
some of the positive and negative outcomes on the Ilora Farm
Settlement in Western Nigeria (henceforth IFS) with
particular emphasis on women, the study provides added
commentary and insights of potential value to planners of
future schemes.

The Ilora Farm System Settlement

In 1959, settlement schemes, accompanied by a
comprehensive package of land allocation and agricultural
services, were initiated in Nigeria's former Western State,
or what is now Ondo, Oyo, Ogun, and Lagos States. They were
intended:

1. To attract educated young people into viable farming
units as an alternative to urban living.

2. To demonstrate that carefully planned farming sys-
tems can be satisfying and lucrative.

3. To raise agricultural production to supply the
growing population of the country as well as to
maintain exportable products.

In order to fully exploit the productivity of the
region, two types of settlements were planned. "Type A"
focused on tree crops in the rain and dry forest areas.
(Eleven out of the thirteen settlements were of this type.)
"Type B" focused on farm crops in the northern savanna. IFS
is a "Type B" settlement. The schemes' general features were
similar.

Settler selection criteria in the project documents
made no explicit distinction on the basis of sex, specifying
simply young, educated settlers (middle school leavers).
However, girls and young women were referred to as spouses
of settlers and settler de facto came to mean male settler.
Membership in the settlement cooperative was automatic for
all male settlers.

Each settlement was to be organized as a large
multipurpose cooperative whose function included the
purchase of production inputs, the processing and marketing
of crops, the operation of the machinery pool, and feeding

and large-scale rearing of livestock. The settlements all
had the same basic design, with communal services such as a
school, a health and community center, a church or mosque,
market stalls, a shop ard post office, processing units,
storage facilities, machinery pool, and staff
quarters. (See Figure 1).

The layout was modeled on the dispersed Israeli moshav.
Around the village center, home plots of between one-half
and one acre were laid out in blocks of four, containing the
settler's house and a garden area with space for animal
husbandry. Behind the home plot was an area of about two to
two and one-half acres for families to grow crops for
domestic consumption. The remaining areas in the settlement
were allocated for arable crops, principally maize, which
was to be grown on 90 percent of the arable acreage.

Scientific farming techniques, especially mechaniza-
tion, were to be encouraged to help raise settlers'income
and to demonstrate how the drudgery could be taken out of
farming. Mechanization was to make new farmers less depen-
dent on hired labor. In the initial labor calculations,
settlers' wives were projected to contribute one third of
the agricultural labor. Seasonal variations of labor requi-
rements were not mentioned.

Additional production plans included large-scale animal
rearing--poultry, pigs, :and cattle. Prior to this time,
cattle and pigs were not raised extensively in this area
because of the presence of tsetse flies.

The Land and the People

Ilora Farms Settlement lies in southwest Nigeria, which
is settled largely by Yoruba-speaking people. It was created
in a geographic area which had relatively long-established
communities with distinctive economic and cultural forms. It
is from these communities that settlers were recruited into
a new and supposedly superior way of life. The customs and
patterns of living in the area provide a point of reference
when reviewing the achievements of the scheme. Oluwatedo, a
typical village near IFS, is used throughout the study to
represent village life in the area.

Oluwatedo was founded in 1926 as a temporary farming
camp by Yoruba immigrants from Oyo town. It is typical
unplanned mud-hut, tin-roof, nucleated village centered
around a lorry park with a church, a mosque, a primary
school, three stores, and a grinding machine. A periodic
market meets in the village every four days.

Although land around Oyo is said to be held by the
Alafin, the ruler of Oyo, on behalf of his people, land is
actually controlled by lineages rather than chieftains or
i ,

communities. Thus, farm land is held corporately by descent
group, and any member has the right to farm. Although
spouses do not inherit land from each other, daughters can
inherit family property on the understanding that this
property does not pass to their husband's lines. More
commonly, wives and daughters are given the right to farm a
piece of land at some time during their lives.

The main farming system is one of shifting cultivation,
whereby fields are rotated. The main crops are maize, yam,
cassava, and okra, and these are produced for sale as well
as for home use. Although in the Oluwatedo area the majority
of farmers use fertilizers, yields remain low because of
problems with land preparation, late planting, and poor weed
control. The forest-savanna that prevails in the area makes
many of the fields inaccessible to tractors. The tasks of
harvesting and transporting crops as well as weeding are
very labor intensive.

Among the Yoruba, the majority of men earn an income
through their farming activities; the majority of women earn
income through trading. However, the role of women in
farming, both for their husbands and on their own account,
is also significant but often has not been recognized.
Specific tasks are carried out by each sex: men prepare the
land by clearing and burning the forest or bush, and women
plant, weed, harvest, and process the crops.

Goats, sheep, and poultry are owned by the majority of
both men and women for household consumption and ceremonial
purposes. Women are, however, responsible for looking after
these animals.

Women in Nigeria generally, and particularly among the
Yoruba, carry out much of their economic lives independent
from their husbands. Divorce is common and can be initiated
by either party. Traditionally, income is not pooled, or
only incompletely pooled between husband and wife. Wives and
husbands have distinct financial responsibilities.
Therefore, direct access to security assets is important for
both men and women.

Research Methodology and Framework of the Study

The information presented in the study was collected
over a period of twelve months in 1977. An inventory of all
seventy-five households on the scheme and all sixty-five
households in Oluwatedo was undertaken in the first month of
research. Households containing no adult women at the time
the study began were excluded from the survey. Thus, in
Oluwatedo sixty of the sixty-five households, and in IFS
fifty-two of the seventy-five settler households were
included.

Extensive background information was collected from all
the study households (i.e., those with women present). Three
questionnaires dealing with basic demographic information,
farming, and trading activities were employed. The third
questionnaire on trading was completed only by women as
there were no male traders living in the villages. These
questionnaires provided the framework from which a
stratified random sample survey of women in different age
and occupational groups in both IFS and Oluwatedo was drawn
for an intensive survey to explore women's activities and
time use on a day-by-day basis over a period of five months.

The data collected are used qualitatively to explore
the effect of the scheme on men and women, and on women in
different occupation groups.

The author also made a brief return visit in 1984.
Observations from that visit are used to provide an update
and further glimpse of the settlement's progress.

The findings are organized under three broad
categories: agricultural production, employment, and living
conditions. An evaluative overview draws together this
information !as it bears on the settlement's overarching
objective of retaining educated young men and women in new
farming communities.

FINDINGS

The settlement schemes in Western Nigeria were seen as
a solution to the many social, economic, and political
problems facing the region in the late 1950s. Their main
objectives were to stem the rural-urban migration of young
educated male and female school leavers by establishing a
carefully planned "modern" and mechanized farming system
which would provide good incomes. The living conditions and
social services were to be an additional attraction to the
settler and his family, providing them with the amenities
normally associated with towns.

The problem of a high rate of settler turnover and
desertion has beseiged.the settlements from the start. A
study of Ilora Farm Settlement conducted in the early 1970s
estimated that between 1P60 and 1965, forty-two percent of
one-time settlers had left.

Among the causes cited by both men and women for
leaving the settlement were low income, hard work, and poor
houses. It was clear at the time of the 1977 field work that
IFS was poorly thought out and poorly implemented. This
continues to be the case right up to the present. This
evaluation has given most of its attention to women's
difficulties and their greater dissatisfaction with the
scheme, but men faced many problems as well. During 1976,

the number of settler households on IFS declined from
eighty-four to seventy-five. Of the seventy-five households
remaining at the time of the study, twenty-three households
(or thirty percent) were households in which wives had
chosen to live elsewhere. During 1977, this census was
reduced by at least one more household: a young woman farmer
was compelled to leave the settlement when her husband died.
Though departed settlers were not interviewed in this study,
interviews with the remaining women revealed failures of the
settlement to provide components which would have encouraged
settlers to remain.

Agricultural Production

Although farmers were allocated twenty-five acres of
arable land and twenty-five acres for fallow, the available
arable acreage is greatly underutilized: roughly eight acres
are under cultivation at any one time on most holdings. This
was true even though tractoring, fertilizers, and other
modern inputs were available through the farmers'
cooperative. Women's farm holdings on IFS were generally
smaller than or equal to women's farms in nearby villages;
land was not allocated directly to them and they did not
benefit from the larger allocation of land to their
husbands.

Eleven women overall were induced to take up farming on
their own account, but a larger number might have been
expected to had there been sufficient incentives. As planned
inputs failed to materialize or early features (such as the
co-op) began to break down, the remaining resource was the
constant presence of two male agricultural extension
workers who altered their style of giving assistance from
group consultations with male cooperative members to home
visits. It was possibly through a day-to-day familiarity
with the extension agents that the eleven women farmers
gained the information to practice modern farming
techniques. The data indicated that all the women on IFS
applied fertilizer and used tractoring services. It also
indicated that women farmers tended to make more independent
decisions concerning farm operations on their own farms than
women farmers in Oluwatedo. Access to extension advice, IFS
women's higher educational standards and the predominance of
the nuclear family may all have been factors converging to
effect a more equitable access to key resources on the
project than had been originally planned.

Another unexpected benefit for women came from men's
increased production efficiency on IFS; the proportion of
food for home consumption contributed by men on IFS was
greater than that contributed by men in Oluwatedo, and yet
the men still had substantial surpluses to market. All the
women on the settlement gained from this as men on IFS
almost totally support their households with only minimum

contributions from their wives. Women are thus in the
favorable position of being able to sell almost all their
own crops.

The workload projections were incorrect for both men
and women, though more so in the case of women. The original
ratio of male to female labor was calculated at two to one,
when in fact women's farming hours in both IFS and Oluwatedo
frequently exceeded men's.' Nonetheless, women in IFS seem to
have benefitted marginally. Women farmers put in a slightly
more moderate' work day than women in surrounding areas, and
women functioning as unpaid family labor (with no side, own-
account activities) put in somewhat fewer hours than their
counterparts in Oluwatedo.|

Seasonal work peaks are less intense in Ilora Farm
Settlement than in Oluwatedo. However, it should be noted
that certain tasks, such as shelling, weeding, and
harvesting, are still very time-intensive for women.

Employment i

As intended, men's income on IFS is derived from
agricultural production. Women's need for a separate,
independent source of income led to more varied occupational
choices. The settlement, despite its emphasis on farming as
the base of the household's economy, did not alter the
pattern of income generation typical among women in the
area. Among settlement women pursuing activities on their
own account, only 8 percent of the women aged twenty-five to
thirty-four farm exclusively, while 72 percent of this age
group trade exclusively. The absence of an organized market
on IFS and a marketing system linking IFS with the local
marketing chain of daily (mainly urban) and periodic (mainly
rural) markets constitutes a missed opportunity for women on
the settlement. Women traders on IFS did not make gains from
the variety of products available for them to sell, and
settlement women lost out when it came to profitting from
the sale of their husband's crops. Though anticipated and
not part of the original labor calculations, the
availability of some wage employment for women on IFS can be
seen as a gain for women, though not equitably remunerated.

Chickens were given to men but managed by women, with
no water or other special facilities provided by the
project. Given women's interest in trading and the market
for eggs and poultry, this too was a missed opportunity.

Living Conditions

The planned social services have for the most part not
materialized. The lack of easily accessible water for the
household and for poultry farming is especially burdensome

, 1

for women as they have to walk a considerable distance to
obtain water, especially in the dry season when these trips
require two hours a day.

Though water and fuel collection were intensive (in
fact, the second most time-consuming chores in both
villages), the time-use study showed that the most time-
consuming chore was food processing and preparation. IFS
introduced no labor-saving devices for women. The only food-
processing technology that was introduced was a large and
ultimately ineffective maize processor.

No channels were provided for settlers' participation
in the governing of the settlement., Male settlers, though
nominally members of the cooperative, had no voice in its
administration. The lack of social facilities further
contributed to a weak sense of community in IFS. The layout
of the villages called for the construction of housing in
widely separated geometric groupings. This isolated settlers
socially by increasing the time required to walk to central
facilities or to visit neighbors. Settler houses were
smaller and less flexible in design than houses in the area,
lacking space for kin. The resulting lack of the extended
family on the settlement meant that close kin were less
available for the day-to-day running of the household or
childcare. However, there were a few advantages to the new
layout. The homeplots were attached to each settler's home,
and this reduced the time that the majority of women farmers
in IFS spent walking to their farms.

CONCLUSION

As it has been implemented, the Ilora Farm Settlement
scheme has failed to meet some of its most critical
objectives. It has neither incorporated nor held the number
of households targeted. Overall, the settlement schemes'
contribution to the development of Western Nigeria has been
negligible.

Generally, the failure to integrate women's economic
interests is a fundamental weakness in all these projects.
In the IFS, women's entrepreneurship was sufficient to find
income sources over the short term. However, over the long
term, the failure to allocate settler status and land rights
to women in their own right as well as the absence of an
organized market within the local marketing system deprived
women of a secure and reliable means of economic and
personal development.

Recent observations show a continuing downward spiral
for the scheme as a living settlement. Though women were the
first to leave, the men are finding living on the settlement
increasingly unsatisfying. They are creating a system of
commuter agriculture, continuing to farm their plots while
living in nearby towns.

xvii

The basic trouble with the farm settlement is that it
was not related to any existing system, in the same way that
the market in the settlement village was not fully linked
with other markets. Settlements have been artificially
created and supported for political reasons. Given continued
politically motivated support, a commitment to providing the
amenities promised in the plans and to providing women a
direct stake in the settlements would appear to be minimum
corrective policies.

xviti

BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

INTRODUCTION

In the early 1950s Nigeria experienced rapid economic
development as a result of high world prices for raw
materials. During this period a concentration on export cash
crops meant that domestic food agriculture was neglected,
driving up local prices. After 1955 prices for export crops
fell, the economic growth rate declined, and the
differential between rural and urban incomes increased.
Migration of school leavers (girls as well as boys) to urban
centers grew rapidly. This was encouraged by the
introduction of free primary education, which raised
expectations of better-paying jobs for both women and men.

Settlement schemes were started in 1959 as one method
of countering these growing trends in the former Western
Region (now Ondo, Oyo, Ogun, and Lagos states). Their
objectives were:

To attract educated young people into viable farming
units as an alternative to urban living.

To demonstrate that farming could be satisfying and
lucrative.

To raise agricultural productivity in order to supply the
growing population of the country with food and
maintain exportable products.1

To exploit fully the productivity of the region, two types
of settlement were established. "Type A" settlements, in
the rain and dry forests, concentrated on tree crops.
Eleven out of thirteen settlements were of this type. Two
"Type B" settlements, in the savannah, concentrated on
arable crops and poultry production.

This study examines Ilora Farm, one of the two "Type B"
settlements. Settlement schemes have been a subject of much
controversy Questions have been raised about the costs
involved, their ostensible goals, policy implications, and
their viability as a development option. However, few
studies have taken account of women's roles and experiences
in the settlement schemes. 3 The present study provides
information on both male and female settlers, but focuses on
the lives of women, explaining their access to resources,
work contributions, occupational choices, and quality of
life. Some comparisons are made with the nearby and typical
village of Oluwatedo to provide a richer perspective on life
in the area and the options that settlers who were from the
area might have had. By examining some of the positive and
negative outcomes in IFS with special reference to women,
the study seeks to provide insights of potential value to
planners of future schemes.

2

PROJECT DESIGN: AN OVERVIEW OF THE WESTERN NIGERIAN
SETTLEMENT SCHEMES d

The settlement project was undertaken by the government of
the former Western State under the direction of Chief Akim
Diko, the Minister of Agriculture and Natural Resources and
a leader of the Action!Group (AG) political party. In July
1959 following a visit to Israel, Chief Diko announced the
plan. Multiple schemes were to be established, inspired by
the Israeli moshav, collective agricultural settlements in
which individual families1 farmed their own plots under the
supervision of a strong multipurpose cooperative. They were
designed over a six-month period by Israeli and FAO
consultants who were tolcontinue participating in the design
stages in the early years of the project. Building started
by the end of 1959.
S' "
The infrastructure was to be built by the first settlers
through a four-year communal effort. During this time
settlers were paid according to the standards for a
government-employed worker. Once their farms started
functioning, farmers were to pay back a minimal amount to
the government each month. 4

The settlements all had the same :basic features, with
communal services such as a school, a health and community
center, a church or mosque, market stalls, a shop and post
office, processing units, storage facilities, a machinery
pool and staff quarters.

Figure I. lora Farm Settlement

Around the village center home plots of between one-
half and one acre were laid out in blocks of four. They
contained the settler's house and a garden area with space
for animal husbandry. This layout was modeled on the
dispersed Israeli moshav rather than on the nucleated
village typical of the region.

Houses were made of concrete, and generally consisted
of two or three small rooms with some windows. There was
also room for a kitchen, but cooking usually was done
outside. In most cases there was only a single close
neighbor, about an acre away.

Behind the home plot was an area of about two or two
and one half acres where the family could grow crops for
domestic consumption. They were not specifically allocated
to women. The remaining areas of the settlement were
allocated for arable crops and grouped together in blocks
according to crop types. This layout was meant to encourage
the communal use of modern technology and communal
cultivation 6

Criteria for settler selection in the project documents
made no explicit distinction on the basis of sex, specifying
simply young and educated settlers with some middle school
education (sixth to eighth grades). However, girls and
young women were referred to only as spouses of settlers.
Only men had rights to land. Thus settlers came to mean
male settlers. This usage is adhered to throughout the
study. Settlers had permanent tenancy to their holdings as
long as they paid a nominal sum of 1.50 naira per month.
They could not sell the land but could designate one male
heir (only one heir was allowed in order to prevent
fragmentation). If a woman's husband left her or died and no
male kin was available, she was forced to leave the
settlement. Settlers were to be allocated a 70-acre
holding, 35 acres for arable crops and 35 acres in fallow.

Each settlement was to be organized as a large
multipurpose cooperative whose functions included purchase
of production inputs, 'processing and marketing of crops,
operation of the machinery pool, and the feeding and large-
scale rearing of livestock. Technical assistance was to be
provided by a team of workers: an agricultural super-
intendent, agricultural assistants, and field overseers.

Initially the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural
Resources was responsible for all management functions.
Because of the size of the project, other ministries were
expected to cooperate. These included the Ministry of
Health and Social Welfare, the cooperative division of the
Ministry for Trade and Industry; the Ministry of Lands and
Labour; and the Ministry of Works and Transport. 6

The farm settlements were expected eventually to govern
themselves eventually as a cooperative along democratic
lines. Settlers had one vote in the general assembly, which
was to elect a president and various committees, and decide
important questions. Membership in the settlement
cooperative was compulsory and automatic. Fees of one
shilling per paid workday were automatically deducted.

The main focus of the project was to increase the
production of arable crops, particularly maize for sale.
Ninety percent of the land cleared was to be utilized for
maize production 7 Scientific farming techniques,
especially mechanization, were to be encouraged not only to
help raise settlers' incomes, but to demonstrate how the
drudgery could be taken out of farming. Mechanization was
also expected to make farmers less dependent on hired labor.
Initial estimates of the yearly working capacity of the
settler and his family varied from 450 to 900 man-days. 8
These calculations were based on considering the settler's
wife as half the labor unit of the settler. With this
amount of family labor, planners assumed that there would be
little dependence on hired labor. Seasonal variations of
labor requirements were| not mentioned in the project
documents.

Communal and individually managed animal rearing was
also envisaged as an integral part of the settlement's
"well-balanced" farming system. Four poultry units per
settler, with 96 birds per unit, were planned. Initially
individual pigpens were also planned. Because pig rearing
required more special training, pigs were to be phased in
later, along with cattle as communal enterprises. Prior to
this time cattle and pigs were not raised extensively here
because of the presence of tsetse flies. Plans called for
the introduction of more resistant animal strains.

THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE

The village of OlLwatedo, near Ilora Farm Settlement,
is used in this section and throughout the study to
represent village life 'inithe area.

Oluwatedo was founded in 1926 by Yoruba immigrants from
Oyo town as a farm camp, a temporary settlement where people
stay if they are working on farms within easy commuting
distance. Between 1926 and 1931 it consisted of men farmers
only. Beginning in 1931 women and children moved in and
permanent dwellings were built. It is a typical, unplanned,
mud-hut, tin-roofed, nucleated village, centered around a
lorry park with a church, a mosque, a primary school, three
stores (a barber/cobbler and two beer parlors) and a
grinding machine (Figure 2). A periodic market meets in the
village every four days. The population in 1977 was 304
(compared with 466 in 1969), 131 adults and 173 children.

Figure II. Oluwatedo Village Plan

W well 0 10 yda.
ake Richard Ladeinde enumeratorr) 1977

Both the Ilora Farm Settlement and Oluwatedo lie within
southwest Nigeria, in the forest-savanna mosaic zone of Oyo
State. They are settled largely by Yoruba-speaking people.
This area has been farmed only since 1926, but by the time
the road between Ilora town and Oluwatedo was completed in
1940, many people from the surrounding towns (particularly
Oyo) had moved in, set up villages, and started farming.
There are also nomadic Fulani communities and individual
Hausa in the area.

Climate and Region

The research villages lie -in an area of gently
undulating countryside with the savanna lying below 1,000
feet. As a result of fire and varying degrees of' shifting
cultivation and grazing, vast areas that originally had
climates of woodland types have been converted into savanna.
This consists of grassland with trees scattered at very
variable density, with gallery forest along the rivers and
relict patches away from them.

Temperatures are high throughout the year, with a mean
of 26 degrees Celsius. Four seasons can be distinguished: a
cooler dry season (November to March) associated with the
harmattan wind from the north; a hot, dry season (August);
and two hot, wet seasons (late March/early April to June,
and September to October). The two rainy seasons allow for

Figure III. The Research Area

SObalarinnako
.Oluwatedo
Orowole
Elepo Iora

Ibadan
IFS
o __ 1"," Source: Federal Surveys 1967

Note: Ilora Farm Settlement and Ilora town are not
identical, as the map indicates.

double cropping. The rivers and streams have a highly
seasonal discharge, carrying only a trickle between January
and March, ibut rising to a peak flow in September. This
makes water' collection which is one of the most time-
consuming domestic chores for women, extremely arduous in
the dry season. The well in Oluwatedo also runs dry in this
period.

Land Tenure

Although land around Oyo is said to be held by the
Alafin, the ruler of Oyo, on behalf of his people, land is
actually controlled by lineages rather than chiefdoms or
communities. 9 Thus farm land is held corporately by
descent group, and any male member has a right to farm land.
Although spouses do not inherit land from each other,
daughters can inherit family property on the understanding
that the property does not pass to their husbands' lineage.
More commonly wives and daughters are given the right to use
a piece of land.

The Farming System

The main farming system of this area is shifting
cultivation, based on rotating the fields. The main crops
are maize, yam, cassava and okra, and these are produced

i [

for sale as well as for home use. Cropping periods vary from
one to ten years, but are usually two to four years followed
by fallow seven to ten years. Where farmers do not use
fertilizers, a ten year crop rotation is followed: five
years of cropping with maize coming early in the rotation. A
root crop such as yam might be planted next, followed by a
legume such as cowpea, or melon, or okra. Cassava can be
planted last, since it does not have to be fully harvested
but can be stored in the ground for approximately eighteen
months while the land is left fallow. The land would then be
left fallow for five years.

Late planting is a problem. In Oluwatedo most farmers
do not attempt full clearing and stumping of the land, as
the tools available (cutlass, axe, hoe) are not suitable for
this type of work. Burning is often the only practical
method of clearing the land. Farmers then wait for the rains
to soften the land before preparing it, and they are often
late with planting. By the time the crops are planted the
weeds are already well established and farmers are unable to
catch up.

The tasks of harvesting and transporting crops are also
very labor intensive. They are generally done by hand and
headloading. The trees of the forest savanna that prevails
in the area make many of the fields inaccessible to
tractors. In addition, although in the Oluwatedo area the
majority of farmers use fertilizers, yields remain low
because of poor weed control. 10

Division of Labor in Farming

Among the Yoruba the majority of men farm and the
majority of women trade. However, while women's role in
trading has been described in the literature, their role in
farming has been less clearly defined. It has been suggested
on the one hand that women's only economic concern is with
food processing and distribution, with some craft
specialization; 11 that women rarely take part in any
phase of agriculture even though many of them live in the
farmland area, 12 and that women are almost completely
excluded from agricultural work. 13 On the other hand, it
has also been reported that wives assist in reaping and
preparing crops for the market, and in doing so form a
single production unit with their husbands. 14 Still other
studies found that although very few women own farms, many
of them work on their parents' or husbands' farms, or they
are given the rights to use a piece of land. 18

Research for this study indicated that almost all women
spend approximately 25 percent of their time in some farming
activity. Table 1 shows the division of labor on both men's
and women's farms under shifting cultivation methods used in
the region. Men prepare the land through clearing and

burning the forest or bush. Women help their husbands with
planting, applying fertilizers, and weeding.

The source of required labor will vary somewhat on
men's and women's farms.\ For example, women have to hire
some male labor for their own farms to supplement their
husband's contribution. In addition, women face compelling
demands for their labor on their own farms and their
husbands' farms. Given the Yoruba tradition of women having
an independent income,1 they are often considered an
"unreliable source of labor" on their husbands' farms, since
they are unpaid for this work. 16

Women may be hired as labor (principally by men) for
fertilizer application and harvesting, and occasionally for
planting and carrying activities.

Table 1.
Sexual Division of Farm Labor the Study Area on Both Men's and Women's Farms

Goats, sheep, and poultry are owned by the majority of
both men and women for household consumption and ceremonial
purposes. Women are, however, responsible for looking after
these animals,

Women's Economic Roles

Nigerian women generally, and Yoruba women in
particular, plan their economic lives autonomously, separate
from their husbands. Divorce is common and can be initiated
by either party. Traditionally, income is not pooled or only
incompletely pooled between husband and wife.17 Polygamy
is practiced but is Inot widespread in the study
villages. 18 Therefore direct access to security assets is
important for both women and men.

Ideally within the Yoruba culture husbands and wives
have separate financial responsibilities. It is the

husband's responsibility to provide staples such as maize,
yam, and cassava from the farm or to provide money to buy
them. Husbands are also expected to house their families and
provide basic items of clothing. In addition, according to
traditional standards which vary somewhat from practice,
husbands are expected to pay for children's school and
medical fees. They are also expected to give each wife her
initial capital for trading or to provide land on which she
can grow produce to sell. 19

Not every husband can meet all these obligations, and
women generally contribute beyond their traditional
requirements. Women are expected to supply the sauces,
stews, and snacks eaten with the staples. Condiments are
nutritionally significant components of the diet, often
providing essential protein. They are also frequently the
more costly items, and therefore women require a fairly
constant cash flow to purchase the ingredients. Staples on
the other hand are mostly provided in bulk and are preserved
naturally. Women use their own money to buy clothes and
luxury items for themselves and their children. In addition,
both husband and wife have separate responsibilities to
their own kingroups and are expected to contribute toward
birth, death, and marriage ceremonies and other festivals,
as well as to their own ceremonial funds.

A typical economic life of a Yoruba woman in western
Nigeria might be sketched as follows. Yoruba women marry at
about eighteen years of age and move to their husbands'
village. During the early years of marriage women are
economically subservient to their husbands. Their domestic
duties also include extensive unpaid agricultural labor on
their husband's holdings.

These early years are also devoted to organizing the
household, and bearing and rearing children. Yorubas strive
for a three-year space between children owing to traditional
abstinence during an extended breast-feeding period. As
children approach school age (age six) mothers start moving
more seriously into trading enterprises. Children are net
"dependents" on their parents between the ages of six and
either fifteen or eighteen, depending on how much schooling
they receive.

Women between the ages of 25 and 40 are in their prime
years, since their economic authority grows with age and
their status as mothers. Their economic responsibilities are
increased because they usually need to "supplement" their
husbands' income and help provide money for school fees,
food and other family necessities. Initial trading capital
most often comes from their husbands in the form of cash
produce, as indicated above. It also comes from parents or
money the women have saved, but rarely if ever from
professional money lenders or from saving/loan societies.

As the children appr ach marriageable age and the women
are old enough (in their husband's eyes) to be entrusted
with land, some are given land that they farm on their own
account. Women control this farming asset in case of
divorce. Older women are supported principally by their own
activities in trading or farming, and some also receive
support from children.

Rural trading activities throughout western Nigeria are
carried out through a system of periodic markets, a logical
response by both traders and producer-sellers to the need to
concentrate effective demand at particular points in time,
namely at marketplaces on market day. This allows a rational
division of time between production, processing, and trade,
and is an advantage to many people carrying on several kinds
of gainful activity, simultaneously or in alternation 20

Oluwatedo's four-day market (it meets every four days)
is open to any trader and is located in the center of the
village. Trade is dominated by the local food crops,
particular maize, yam, cassava, and okra, which are destined
for the markets in Oyo and Ibadan.

Women traders in Oluwatedo include farmer-traders who
usually market their own farm produce on market days; a few
wholesalers who buy and sell in bulk, and the retail
traders, including those who trade cooked food and
provisions ion a dai yy basis. Retailers constitute the
majority of grassroot traders in villages and small towns
throughout Western Nigeria, selling a mixed portfolio of
wares (cloth, plates, tinned food, and other miscellaneous
items) and acting as intermediaries throughout the whole
marketing chain.

Oluwatedo is like a big supermarket, except that
products are not stored under one roof, but in separate
households, and trading is not regulated by open and closing
times, but by the availability of produce. Traders leave
goods with neighbors and children, carrying on more than one
activity at a time. They can be farming or traveling while
their businesses are being looked after by someone else.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND FRAMEWORK OF THE STUDY
The data presented here were collected over a period of
twelve months in 1977. An inventory of all seventy-five
households on the scheme and all sixty-five households in
Oluwatedo was undertaken in the first month of research.
Households containing no adult women at the time the study
began were excluded from the survey. Thus in Oluwatedo 60 of
the 65 households, and in IFS fifty-two of the seventy-five
settler households were included.

Extensive background information was collected from all

the study households (i.e., those with a women present).
Three questionnaires were used, each administered during
one visit by the principal enumerators, two Yoruba women.
Male enumerators were also used where necessary (to elicit
information from men, for example). Questionnaire 1 was
designed to reveal basic demographic information on
household size and composition, the division of labor and
areas of financial responsibility within each household.
Information was collected on men, women, and all children
over twelve who were not in school. Questionnaire 2, on
farming, was completed for both men and women. Questionnaire
3, on trading, was completed only for women as there were no
male traders living in the villages. These
questionnaires provided the framework from which women in
different occupations were selected for a more intensive
survey.

On the basis of how the women themselves defined their
main occupation, four occupation groups emerged: women who
farmed only, women who farmed and traded, women who traded
only, and women who neither farmed nor traded. References to
women farmers in this study designate those who farmed or
farmed and traded on their own account on their own farms,
in addition to helping their husbands.

Within each occupation group women were also divided
into four age groups: 15 to 24, 25 to 34, 35 to 44, and over
45 (Table 2). Using women's occupations and age groups as a
framework, a stratified random sample survey was drawn for
an intensive survey to explore women's activities and time
use on a day-by-day basis over a period of five months from
August to December 1977. In each village these selected
women were interviewed three to four times in one week of
each of the five months. Each enumerator interviewed
fourteen women--seven on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and
Sunday, and the other seven on Tuesday, Thursday, and
Saturday to keep recall limited to two days at the most.
However, as not all women were able to answer all the
questions the number of respondents varies throughout the
studies. Questions divided activities into farming, trading,
domestic, and other activities.

The author made a brief return visit in 1984.
Observations from that visit provide an update and further
glimpse of the settlement's progress. In addition,
supplementary information is drawn from two other nearby
villages, Orowole-Elepo and Obalarinnako.

The ultimate goal of the settlement project is to keep
the educated young in farming. This study details how the
project's original assumptions and design choices were
actually implemented and, in practice, what incentives for
participation were offered to young male and female settlers
in IFS. Qualitative information gained through this study is
used to make sense of a broader phenomenon: the high settler

turnover that plagued the new settlements in Western
Nigeria. Using IFS as a case in point, the study seeks to
learn what actually happened to the new settlers, and what
were some differences in male and female settlers'
experiences.i

The more in-depth study of women and their occupations
in both the village of pluwatedo, representing life in the
area, and in IFS provides insights into the impact of the
scheme on women's economic choices and daily work routines.
Were there different advantages for women in different
occupations? How did Ithey cope with the inevitable
shortfalls of settlement design and implementation? Which of
these shortfalls were more serious?

Not all discussions Ire based on the same comparisons.
Comparisons of women's experience with men's experience are
often instructive, but comparisons with the experience of
other women in the area may be more to the point when
looking for reasons that women would find the new scheme
satisfactory or unsatisfactory. Finally, comparisons of the
experiences of women in different occupational groups within
and between the two communities can be used to learn how
effective the new settlement was in bringing new resources
to women and changing their patterns of labor and resource
deployment, land whether it represented an improvement over
typical rural life.! 'Because the scheme involved a
population with a somewhat different demographic and
resource base, comparisons between IFS and nearby villages
must be made carefully,! and are useful primarily to provide
a background to patterns of work and social life that might
have been relevant to planners.

S Table 2.
The Stratified Random Sample f Women's Age Groups and Main Occupations
(The Number Selected for Intensive Study Shown in Brackets by Villages.)

The overall success of the scheme in meeting its
objectives, and the extent to which various components were
implemented, is discussed under three broad categories:
agricultural production, employment, and living
opportunities. An evaluative overview draws on information
about the three major areas of settlement intervention and
serves as a conclusion. The last section presents
alternative approaches to both design and implementation
that might in the future overcome the documented shortfalls
of the scheme.

FINDINGS
THE ILORA FARM SETTLEMENT: A BRIEF HISTORY, 1959 1977

Ilora Farm Settlement, founded in 1959, incorporates
the same circular layout used for all the settlements (see
Figure 1), with a large central enclosure including houses,
one or two stores, and a marketplace. Farm holdings radiate
from the center in all directions, potentially covering a
total area of 7,503 acres, including 2,625 acres available
for arable crops. Planned and actual design elements are
outlined in Figure 4.

Originally eighty-nine settler units were planned. This
was raised to 102 units -in 1960, but by the end of 1961 only
fifty-eight units had been built. By 1965 there were ninety-
seven units, but only fifty-eight settler households with a
total population of 1401 The settler population increased to
a maximum of 'eighty-four households from 1965 to 1975. Over
the course of 1976 the settler households declined from
eighty-four 'to seventy-five. In February 1977 there were
seventy-five households, and a population of 264.

At every stage of establishment, there were more hou-
sing units than settler families; an inability to find
settlers was a major problem. In response, planners broa-
dened the criteria of settler selection. When recruitment
began, although the sex of the settler was not explicitly
referred to in project documents, only young, single males,
who could read and write English, had a definite interest in
agriculture, had shown initiative, and had passed a medical
examination were considered suitable applicants. When
criteria did not bring the expected result, young married
candidates with someI experience in agriculture were
considered. Finally, educational requirements were also
lowered and eventually 'aived.

As noted earlier, settlers were given rights to land
and the right to pass it on to (male) heirs. Spouses of
settlers were not directly allocated any land, although the
area immediately behindi the home plot was assumed to be
destined for the household provisioning food agriculture,
including vegetables :that are typically grown on women's
farms. Settlers had tenancy to their holdings for as long as
they paid a very nominal sum of 1.50 naira per month.

While data on the original cost estimates for Type A
settlements were available, data on the original cost
estimates for Type B settlementss were not. During the
period 1959 to 1964, the actual cost of establishing one
settler household in IFS averaged & 5,000. A useful point of
comparison between the investment and the return on the
investment is average household income reported by male
settlers from 1959-64, which was 150 pounds per year.
I

Although the farm settlement was meant to be run as a
cooperative with a democratically elected governing body, in
fact it was run by a principal settlement officer under
close ministerial management. The ministry considerably
influenced the distribution of collected funds and the use
of credit by individual settlers. 21

Initially, each settler was entitled to a seventy-acre
holding (thirty-five acres for arable crops and thirty-five
acres in fallow), four poultry units that each contained 96
birds, and a pigpen. Due to scarce facilities and staff
shortages, in IFS it was not possible to provide all
settlers with this much acreage, nor were all provided with
poultry and pigpens. In 1966 each settler was allocated
twenty-five acres for arable crops and twenty-five acres for
fallow as well as a battery cage of 192 layers or a broiler
house stocked with 100 broilers. A government poultry farm
was established on the settlement; it employed one male line
worker and a number of part-time women workers. No specific
individual services or assistance was provided in regard to
poultry rearing. This was the situation when the study was
carried out in 1977.

By 1966 only 18 percent of the arable-crop acreage was
planted. 22 According to unpublished data on IFS
collected by Charles Kavunja, in 1976 this figure was 16
percent. 3 Poultry production (which was women's
responsibility) had reached a laying efficiency of only 58.2
percent in 1966 (more recent data are unavailable). 24
Pig breeding and cattle rearing barely covered costs, and
because of the environment there were difficulties in
keeping animals: death rates were high and breeding rates
were low. Only one centralized piggery was established.
Cattle rearing was also a centralized although marginal
activity, managed by nomadic Fulani who were hired by
project management.

In the original plan IFS was to have electricity, a
water supply, a market, schools, a health facility, and
other social structures featured in all the western Nigeria
settlement schemes. By February 1977 only a small church and
a primary school had been established. In June of that year
the women of the settlement established a market under an
open tin roof. It was a very small, daily, mainly consumer
retail market where cooked food, bread, provisions, and
small amounts of peppers, tomatoes, vegetable leaf, and okra
were sold to the local population, hired laborers, and
occasional outside traders. Agricultural surpluses are sold
at markets in Ilora town, Oyo and even as far away as
Ibadan.

Roads Dirt access dirt access same same
road to road in place
settlement

Electricity full electricity no electricity same same
planned to reach in settlement
each house

Piped Water Pipes and water pipes in place same same
to be available not connected
through stand- no running water
pipes around the
settlement.

18

For the most part !the cooperative failed to provide the
inputs planned. Twenty-one imported tractors initially
provided were out of commission within a year and were never
repaired. Some privately owned tractors were available for
rental on an individual basis. Similarly, processing
equipment for maize production also broke down very quickly
and was never repaired.! In 1977 a number of privately owned
cassava grinders were available in and around the settlement
on an individual basis. Planned storage silos also were not
in operation.

In 1966 technical assistance was provided by one
agricultural superintendent, four agricultural assistants,
and eleven field overseers. In 1977 technical assistance
was provided by at least two resident male extension
officers who visited farms on an individual basis.
Fertilizer was readily available and subsidized at a
government rate. While herbicides were not subsidized, the
presence of; extensioni officers assured that IFS settlers
were more 'likely to' be informed about its use and
availability.

In 1984 since most settlers were unable to utilize
large plots of land, land had accumulated in the hands of
some of the few remaining original settlers, who became
large-scale maize growers and frequently owned land outside
the settlement. They were likely to own and rent out
tractors. No effort was made to prevent individual
accumulation or renting! of land. In one instance a woman had
unofficially inherited her husband's land and was running a
large-scale poultry operation, hiring other settlers to help
her. A health clinic had been established. But for the most
part, there was no longer any organized administration.

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION

Land Resources and Technical Inputs

Planners wanted to create in IFS a highly "modern"
farming community of "progressive farmers", skilled in
applying scientific farming techniques. These farmers were
expected to bring under cultivation much larger tracts of
land than were customarily under cultivation in adjoining
areas. Each farmer received approximately twenty-five acres
of arable land and twenty five acres of fallow land, whereas
farmers' holdings in this area were typically fewer than
eight acres. The principal crop to be grown on 90 percent
of the arable land was maize. Other crops were expected to
be produced, but less attention was devoted to them by
planners. Inputs were specifically designed to create an
environment ideal for intensified maize production at
sufficient levels to generate a substantial surplus for
sale. Through larger and more finely prepared land

resources, the establishment of a cooperative, subsidized
tractoring, low-cost credit, and an intensified extension
service, economies of scale were encouraged in IFS. In
Oluwatedo, as in most of the surrounding farming
communities, plots were smaller and more dispersed and not
fully cleared. Oluwatedo received some extension services
but no special credit provisions, tractoring, or other
facilities.

The land resources allotted to IFS settlers far
exceeded those available to other farmers in the area. In
Oluwatedo cultivated plots averaged just over seven acres
for each male farmer. The comparable figure for IFS was not
much different. Roider and Kavunja's surveys of men's
holdings (cited earlier) are instructive and confirm each
other: Roider found in 1966 that male settlers had an
average 8.2 acres under cultivation or 18 percent of the
fifty-acre holding. Kavunja in 1970 showed that 16 percent
of the total holdings were under cultivation.

In 1977 the average arable plot size, as reported by
farmers, was just under twenty-eight acres of the "official"
holding. Men typically planted between six and ten acres,
most of which was devoted to maize. Even allowing for large
differences among individual farmers in IFS, it is clear
that IFS land resources were underutilized.

All farms in IFS were plowed in both seasons, and all
the farmers, both male and female, used chemical fertilizers
that were subsidized at government rates. This was true
even after (as discussed below) some of the original inputs
on IFS ceased to be provided collectively and began to be
provided through private initiative. In Oluwatedo over 80
percent of the men and fewer than half of the women farmers
used fertilizer. In addition, only about half of the plots
in were plowed by tractors. This was partly due to the
existence of smaller and more dispersed plots, and the
presence of trees, which made some areas inaccesible to
tractors. In the settlement, land had been purposefully
cleared to create large fields ideal for tractoring.

The size of women's holdings was determined by their
husbands, who had the direct rights to land. Despite the
large holdings of men and the general underutilization of
arable land, according to the general survey undertaken for
the study women farmers (women who cited this as their main
own-account occupation) reported farm sizes in IFS similar
to or smaller than those in Oluwatedo and other nearby
villages. In Oluwatedo the average size of women's farms
was 3.32 acres. In nearby Obalarinnako women also had
holdings similar to those on IFS --2.88 acres-- similar to
reported average holdings for women farmers in IFS of 2.82
acres. Studying the distribution more closely and taking
account of women with exceptionally large plots, women
farmers' mean farm size in all three communities was under 2

acres. In IFS 64 percent of the women had farm sizes of 2
acres or less, compared to 54 percent in Oluwatedo and 58
percent in Obalarinnako.

In IFS clearly there is more land that could be
allocated to women for their own use. The prime candidates
would be women past I the early years of marriage and
childbearing whose need to generate independent income is
greatest. However, the overall framework that extended
settler status to men mitigates against a long term,
meaningful accumulation of land resources by women because
these assets are not ecure. For example, during the
course of this study, oe woman in her late twenties who
described herself as exclusively a farmer was forced to
leave the settlement hen her husband died of a tetanus
infection. She lost all rights of cultivation after his
death.

Though farm practice in IFS involved more scientific
techniques than that in Oluwatedo, it fell short of the
project plans. The' original intentions regarding an
equitable and efficient) delivery of inputs (a strong
cooperative, steady credit, maize processing units) did not
match reality at any stage in the project. Over time the
cooperative functioned less and less well. By 1977 when the
fieldwork was done, its operations were barely in evidence.
The twenty-one imported tractors initially provided were out
of commission within one year and were never repaired. In
1977 tractoring in IFS was done by privately owned tractors
available through rental on an individual basis. Processing
equipment to remove the kernels from the cob for storage
purposes broke down very quickly and was never repaired.
The plannedimaize storage silos were also in operation only
briefly. Once broken, they were never repaired. Fertilizer
continued to be available. At all times there were at least
two resident agricultural officers on the scheme, but staff
was much reduced from the original team. Lacking an active
cooperative as a base, agricultural staff discarded group
demonstrations in favor of household visits.

Women's Decision Making and Access to Technical Advice

There were no specific services designed for women,
whose farming roles were originally countenanced only as
unpaid family labor under the direction of their husbands.
Data on decision making gathered for this study suggest that
the system of house visiting as opposed to group extension
seems to have given women access to inputs they may not have
had through group demonstrations to men either in the field
or through the cooperative.

In Oluwatedo husbands dominated in decision making,
especially in the heavier farm operations of clearing,
burning, and stumping!the bush, and deciding when the land

must be plowed by tractor. Women made more independent
decisions about hand-plowing, planting, weeding, harvesting,
and carrying operations, which they themselves were actually
involved in.

The overall division of labor between men and women in
general as outlined in Table 1 holds in IFS. On the other
hand, in IFS women were more likely to make major decisions
concerning operations on their own farms, but especially
those concerned with planting, applying fertilizer, weeding,
harvesting and carrying crops to store (see Table 3). The
results are somewhat surprising, as one would have expected
husbands in IFS to have been the major decision makers in
view of the fact that they were the official settlers and
had direct and official access to the agricultural agents.
They also could attend agricultural training courses at the
farm institutes.

However, women in IFS were more educated than those in
Oluwatedo. Only three women in Oluwatedo had been to school
(for four, five, and eight years respectively). In
contrast, twenty-three women in IFS had been to school for
periods ranging from two to ten years. The higher
educational levels of the young females in IFS, the general
youthfulness of the couples, and the predominance of the
conjugal family in the settlement also may have resulted in
a more equitable relationship between husband and wife,
meaning that wives could share in the exchange of technical
information.

In this section data from Oluwatedo are compared with
data from IFS to assess how successful the planners were in
establishing new paths for agriculture, concentrating on
maize production to generate surplus for sale. It would be
logical given the settlement's emphasis on maize that this
would be the most important crop for both men and women
farmers, and indeed Table 4 shows the great majority of men
in Oluwatedo and IFS growimaize. Looking at only the number
of farmers growing each crop it is clear that a substantial
majority in both IFS and Oluwatedo also grow cassava.
Though cassava was not a 'project" crop, it can be grown by
itself or intercropped with maize, and there is a strong
local market for it. A striking but perhaps short-lived
difference between male farmers in IFS and Oluwatedo
regarding crop choices Iisthe very high frequency with which
yams are grown in Oluwatedo (exceeding even the frequency of
cassava growing). Farmers are likely to plant either maize
or yams, rather than both at the same time, since they are
labor intensive and require good fertile soil.

Women's own-account production in both Oluwatedo and
IFS is devoted primarily to maize and cassava. However,
cassava production is notably more popular in Oluwatedo than
in IFS; three-quarters of the own account farmers in
Oluwatedo as opposed to 20 percent in IFS grew cassava. The
reverse pattern is true of maize. In contrast to Oluwatedo
(as one might expect given the project's focus) 70 percent
of. the women in IFS grew maize, whereas approximately half
of the women in Oluwatedo did.

Other crops mentioned by one or two farmers overall in
IFS and Oluwatedo were vegetable leaf, cowpea, melon and
tomato. A crop exclusively mentioned by women farmers in
IFS was pepper, grown by three women. Three-quarters of it
was sold at market.

The most popular crops were also those to which the
greatest acreage was devoted. Overall about forty percent
of the acreage in Oiuwatedo and surrounding areas was
planted with maize, thirty-five percent with cassava, and
thirteen percent with yams. The remaining twelve percent
was planted with a variety of plants, mainly legumes. In
IFS the great majority of the planted acreage was in maize.
This was true for both!men and women. The disproportionate
devotion of resources to maize of the women farmers in IFS
can be seen in the proportion of acreage planted. On the
average IFS female holding, 2.3 acres out of 2.8 acres were
devoted to maize. This compares with an average of 1.7 out
of 3.3 acres on women farmers' holdings in Oluwatedo.

Table 4.
Major Crops Produced for Home Consumption and Sale in Oluwatedo and IF8

No data on yields of specific crops on the settlement
were obtained in this study. Data on yields in the Western
Nigeria area can be gauged through surveys by the Ministry
of Economic Planning and Reconstruction in 1972 and the
Ministry of Economic Development in 1973, and a small
evaluative study of maize production in the area by Hoyoux
in 1976. 28 Hoyoux studied progressive and "traditional"
farmers in IFS, Oluwatedo, and Orowole-Elepo. He found that
the average yields in these villages were 2,096 kilograms
per hectare, compared with an average yield in the Western
State of 679 kilograms per hectare recorded in the 1972
study by the Ministry of Economic Planning and
Reconstruction. Hoyoux also noted that the best yields for
both planting seasons were obtained by "progressive farmers"
and were attributable to their greater use of hired labor,
and higher level of technology and inputs in the form of
tractor services, fertilizers, herbicides, and improved seed
varieties. The IFS farmers in his sample were classified as
progressive because these inputs were more generally and
reliably available to them than to farmers outside the
settlement area.

An indirect means of validating the presumed greater
per acre yield and total output in IFS can be gauged by

differences lin the balance of home consumption and marketed
surplus. In IFS, as Table 4 indicates, women contribute
much smaller shares of their own farm output of maize and
cassava to household requirements and are able to sell much
larger proportions than are women in Oluwatedo. With higher
yields, the volume of crops that men surrender to household
use can remain constant or even increase and still leave men
with a substantial surplus for sale.

In Oluwatedo men's and women's accounts confirmed each
other. 28 Both indicated that men supplied about 72
percent of the food consumed in the households in Oluwatedo,
with women providing 28 percent. In IFS men were providing
86 percent of household food, and women were providing less
than 14 percent.

As women's obligations to supply staples to the
household are less than men's, men's production increase
releases women's surpluses for sale. This means that the
greater farming output' on IFS is not only making households
more food self-sufficient; but the women in particular gain
in view of mcge proportionate increases in sales of own-farm
produce.

Labor Requirements

This section examines the impact of agricultural
"modernization" on the seasonal and overall levels of men's
and women's work burden. In light of the fact that one of
the objectives of the plan was to take the drudgery out of
farming, this section compares the planners' original
projections with actual labor requirements of modernized
farming as practiced on IFS.

It is often argued that agricultural intensification
strategies either incorrectly calculate the contribution
required of women (as unpaid laborers) or ignore women's
agricultural activities! altogether. Added to this,
purportedly gender-blind technological innovations,
marketing channels, and information may in fact be
selectively designed ito increase the efficiency of men's
labor but not of women's.

Further, since IFS seeks to make farming attractive to
young educated men andlwomen, the efficiency of labor should
compare favorably with that of nearby farming communities.
There is a careful balance in this requirement, as it is the
lack of sufficient jand well-remunerated employment
opportunities in rural areas that drives young people to the
cities. A scheme such as IFS must offer enough to do with a
fair return for all. Men's and women's workload on the
settlement will be compared, as will workloads in IFS and
Oluwatedo. Seasonal workloads on women in different

occupational groups will be commented on.

The estimates of annual working capacity of the settler
and his family varied considerably in the early planning
phases of the settlement schemes. IFS's original
agricultural development plan was based on little reliable
economic and technical information except for research from
extension service stations which focused mainly on the
technical problems of tree-crop production, not relevant to
IFS or the other "Type B" settlement. In 1961 FAO's overall
estimate of the labor requirements called for 450 "man-days"
per year (applied to both "Type A" and "Type B" settlements)
in the initial phases of settlement. This estimate allowed
for an expansion to 600 man-days with the growth of the
family. It was estimated that one-third of the labor--200
man-days--would be supplied by the settler's wife. For "Type
B" settlements, however, the labor projections were
unaccountably reduced. For IFS the FAO recommended 235 man-
days per year; 157 for the male settler and 78 for his wife.
27 (For the purpose of this discussion a man-day is
considered eight hours of labor.)

In IFS the shortage and cost of labor proved the
biggest constraint in exploiting the large holdings. One of
the settlement's assumptions was that the new agricultural
methods would reduce reliance on hired labor. However, in
reality the farmers in IFS had a continuing need for hired
labor and even with hired labor portions of arable acreage
were still left out of production.

Table 5 presents the original FAO projections alongside
data collected during this study. Male farmers in IFS worked
264 days or 1 2/3 times the number of annual workdays
originally projected. The situation for women is more
complex; the form and intensity of their workload was
greatly misunderstood in the original planning documents.

For this study, women were asked what they did each day
and for how long. Their time use was charted over a five-
month period. Women who provided unpaid agricultural labor
on their husbands' farms with no side own-account farming or
trading activity reported working approximately 192 days or
2 2/3 times the original projection. Women farmers put in an
estimated 576 hours on their own farms--just under the hours
projected for "settlers wives' labor" on their husbands
farms. Women in all occupational categories (including women
who had no own-account activities) averaged 1,300 hours per
year of labor on their husbands' farms -- about double the
original projection. With work requirements of this level,
it is clear that there will be competing demands on women's
labor time between their own account activities and their
husbands' farming activities.

Table 5.
Projections and Actual Work Requirements

FAO IFS I Oluwatedo
|Projections Men Labor/Own Farms

Total # of "man-days"'
required 235 264 264

Total # of male
(husband) days
required 157

Annual # of
husband hours 1256 1716 1584

Total # of
wife days 78

Annual # of
wife hours 624

IFS

Women in Women with No Women Farmers on
All Occupational Own-account Activities/ Own Farms
P Froj ions Groups on Husbands' Farms
iProjections j

Total # of "man-days"
required 235

Total # of male
(husband) days
required 157

Annual # of
husband hours 1256

Total # of
wife days 78 1300 1445 576

Annual # of
wife hours 624

Oluwatedo

!Women in Women with No Women Farmers on
All Occupational Own-account Activities/ Own Farms
Groups Labor on Husbands' Farms

Total # of "man-days"
required

Total # of male
(husband) days
required

Annual # of
husband hours

Total # of 216
wife days

Annual # of
wife hours 300 1966 1188
Sl I

Men in Oluwatedo worked slightly fewer total hours than
men in IFS, but reported working the same number of days.
The average labor contribution of women in all occupational
categories (including those with no own-account activities)
in Oluwatedo was 1,300 hours per year, the same as the
average figure in IFS. Women farmers in Oluwatedo reported
216 days and 1,188 hours per year. These women farmers were
older that their IFS counterparts, and their experience with
and commitment to farming may partially account for their
greater labor. However, as noted earlier, they had less
access to modern inputs and advice, and their labor
"efficiency" may have been less as well. The role of hired
labor is difficult to evaluate apart from observing that in
both IFS and Oluwatedo hired labor was used to some degree
in almost all tasks, but data suggest that women farmers in
IFS were in a more favorable position than their
counterparts in Oluwatedo. They were both able to put in
fewer hours and to sell a larger proportion of their
produce.

For all farmers in IFS and Oluwatedo, regardless of the
main crop mixes, the busiest periods with the heaviest
workloads are between March and May, and then again in
August and September. Due to the unreliability of the rains
and the risks associated with planting in the early season,
many farmers, especially in Oluwatedo, prefer to stagger
their planting instead of planting in those weeks which
would be most advantageous in terms of high yields. This
also uses the workforce more effectively over several months
and reduces labor peaks. Although women are not directly
involved in land preparation, they are involved in other
farm operations more or less continuously throughout the
year. This includes planting, weeding, harvesting and
transporting activities on their husbands' and on their own
farms.

Looking at data drawn from an intensive study of three
farmers with farms of average size in Oluwatedo and three in
IFS, we can look for general patterns and see whether a
modernized agricultural system assisted women in carrying
out female-typed tasks on their own farms. The data in Table
6 are simply illustrative of how women farmers use their
time. There appear to be greater fluctuations in the overall
number of hours spent on farming in Oluwatedo than in IFS.
Over a five-month planting and harvesting season the total
hours put in range from 46 hours in August to 142 hours in
September. In IFS the number range from a low of sixty-five
hours in September to a high of 108 hours in December.

Source of data: Intensive study in 1977 of 3 women farmers
each in Oluwatedo and IFS on their own farms.

More indicative of the intensity of women's work burden
than the total number of hours put in are what tasks women
report as being the most time consuming. The principal
harvest time in Oluwatedo is September because as mentioned
above, farmers prefer shared or staggered planting. In IFS
peak harvest time is more concentrated and falls in the
month of August. In IFS the unreliability of the rains is
less critical since the use of tractors has a great
advantage over hand plowing insofar as hard soils can be
more easily worked in tIe dry season, and land preparation
can correspondingly be speeded up. Maize can then be planted
at the optimum time for higher yields. As harvesting is
carried out manually iniboth villages, women devoted a
considerable number of hours to this task.

Transportation of harvested crops in IFS is most
frequently carried out by tractors pulling wagon loads. Head
loading is more common in Oluwatedo.

Shelling is also a very time-consuming task as it is
done manually by beating maize cobs with a stick. In
Oluwatedo nearly 100 percent of the crop is processed in
this fashion, whereas in IFS most of the crop is transported
off the settlement with kernels still on the cob. Women's
biggest time commitment to shelling in any one month was
thirty-four hours in December in IFS compared to forty-seven
hours for the women in Oluwatedo in September.

Weeding is another laborious task in both villages. In
Oluwatedo weeding is carried on fairly steadily from August
to December (except foria dramatic low of five hours in

October), reaching a peak in December. In IFS the peak
weeding time is more concentrated. Crops planted by tractors
are weeded by hand, requiring fifty-seven hours of work in
November and sixty in December. In Oluwatedo the comparative
figures were twenty-nine hours in November and fifty-eight
in December.

Despite the fact that the workload projections of
planners were incorrect, women in IFS seemed to have
benefited marginally. Farmers worked a slightly more
moderate farming day, and women functioning as unpaid family
labor (with no own-account activities) put in somewhat fewer
hours than their counterparts in Oluwatedo. Seasonal work
peaks are less intense. However, it should be noted that
certain tasks such as shelling, weeding, and harvesting are
still very time consuming for women.

EMPLOYMENT

Women's Occupational Choices

The strategy in IFS for providing a meaningful
livelihood to settlers was limited to offering farming as
the sole occupation. It was expected that male farmers
would provide a "family income"; women were included (as
will be detailed later)as unpaid family labor. This
approach is very limited, and did not acknowledge that both
men and women in Yoruba society have distinct occupations
and independent income-earning activities. Their accounts
are to a high degree separate, and men's income is not
equally shared with women. How then were women's
independent income sources and occupational choices affected
by a scheme that overlooked their roles in food processing
and trading?

First, let us review what we know of men's occupational
choices. Men, by their own account, accepted the scheme's
notion of a single and prime occupation. Men came to the
settlement because they wanted to farm. In the very first
interviews conducted in the study, all the men called
themselves farmers, with a very few also citing a minor
interest in poultry. So primary is farming as an economic
role for men, that of all adult men in Oluwatedo in similar
"first interviews," 92 percent identified themselves solely
as farmers, and 8 percent presented themselves as farmers
with some side occupation, such as herbalist or carpenter.

On the other hand, women in nearby villages and -(as
will be seen) in IFS are more likely to engage in several
occupations. These can include trading, wage labor and own-
account farming. Trading, however, as noted earlier is
reported as the primary source of independent income for
most women from their mid-twenties.

Women's occupational choices were a central focus of
this study. iTrading by itself is descriptive of a range of
"occupations," and therefore in this section we will be able
to discuss Ithe impact of the settlement on women's
occupational choices and sources of income, with relatively
more detail offered on trading activities.

The settlement, despite its emphasis on farming as the
base of the household economy, did not alter the pattern of
income generation typical in the region. Referring to Table
2, it can be seen that women variously describe their
activities as trading only, trading and farming, farming
only, and having no independent occupation or source of
income. Women's tendencylto trade has not been altered in
IFS. Among settlement women pursuing activities on their own
account only 8 percent of the younger women of reproductive
age (25 to 34) farm exclusively, while 72 percent of this
age group trade exclusively.

One difference from patterns in nearby Oluwatedo is
notable. Thirty-seveni percent of the women in IFS (or
twenty women) had no independent source of income. The age
distribution !of these women suggests why. All five of the
women 15 to 24 reported having no established independent
source of income. Only three women over 34 reported this
situation. The women without independent occupations were
in the main disproportionately the young. Those under 24
were either daughters who had not yet left home or very
young wives with small children. In nearby villages young
women would be the Ileast likely to have own-account
activities and would be committed to assisting husbands on
their farms. If IFS has affected the occupational
portfolios of women in this age group, it may be that there
is slightly less need for young women to generate
independent income. As noted above, the degree to which
women trade on their own account for short-term household
needs may be lessened by the fact that the men in IFS were
providing more, as reflected in the high percentage of
family food men were bringing in.

A comparison of the products traded in the two villages
indicates a strong similarity, with a few categories where
differences may be related to the commercial environment in
the two villages. In IFS the percentage of women trading in
ready-made foods is less than in Oluwatedo, 20 compared to
40 percent. These foods are marketed daily for daily
consumption. In the settlement the population is smaller
overall, there is less activity in the central square, and
there are fewer schoolchildren to form a market. The
principal clientele for ready-made foods on IFS would be
hired laborers.

In contrast, women on IFS were more likely than the
women in Oluwatedo to trade in "essential provisions."
These are such items as sugar, cigarettes, dye, tinned milk,

*I

soap powder, matches, cooking cubes, and bread. In general
these items are not as dependent on periodic markets for
their sale; people buy them every day. Therefore, a
marginal or beginning trader without access to a regular
organized market or larger capital would not lose by trading
these items.

Egg traders form a very small category unique to IFS,
as poultry keeping on a large scale was found only on the
settlement. It was cited by a few men as a secondary
occupation, but poultry raising is women's work, as is
generally the case in traditional societies. The link that
could make poultry raising a profitable activity is egg
trading. But the lack of sufficient poultry, technical
assistance supports devoted to poultry raising, and an
adequate and ready water supply undoubtedly contributed to
the low productivity level cited above. Yet there is a
demand, particularly for eggs, both in rural and urban
areas.

The largest concentration of traders in a single item
is a number of women in Oluwatedo specializing in pap (a
cold, corn-starch pudding). The production of pap from
maize is very labor intensive. Despite this, a number of
traders in Oluwatedo traveled several times a week to Oyo to
sell it. In IFS only one woman made pap and sold it
locally. Therefore, it seems that despite the emphasis on
maize in IFS and the generation of a sizable surplus for
sale, women's own-account trading activity did not benefit.
A review of how and whether women in IFS sold some part of
their husband's crop suggests why.

As Table 7 indicates, all six of the women in Oluwatedo
who considered farming as their primary occupation sold
unprocessed agricultural products on behalf of their
husbands. The combined responses of all others who engaged
in own-account activities (farmer-traders and traders)
indicates that fifteen out of fifty sold unprocessed
products on behalf of their husbands. In total, 37.5
percent of those engaged in own-account activities sold some
of their husbands' crops.

In the settlement a greater percentage of those who
engaged in own-account activities sold portions of their
husbands' crops: 61.8 percent. However, fewer women in IFS
handled any part of their husband's maize crop (the biggest
money maker) in spite of the increased output. Only 38
percent sold their husbands maize in IFS, compared with 66
percent in Oluwatedo. This is because most of the maize is
sold directly to outside private wholesalers who buy in
large quantities, thereby excluding wives and other women
traders in IFS.

Table 7.
Number of Farmers, Farmer-Traders, and Traders Selling Husbands' Crop by Village

[a] Represents all the women farmers in Oluwatedo
[b] In total there were fifty women farmer-traders and
traders in Oluwatedo; only fifteen sold their husbands
products.
[c] Represents four women farmers in IFS; a fifth had to
leave when her husband died.
[d] In total there were twenty-nine women farmer-traders and
traders in IFS. Only seventeen sold their husbands'
products.
[el Women may, of course, sell more than one crop.

Source: Fieldwork 1977

In addition, even though most women in Oluwatedo are
not paid for selling their husbands' crops, there are ways
in which they can make i something for themselves. For
example, when maize is sold in Oluwatedo it is transferred
from one 200-pound bag to a slightly smaller "200-pound"
bag, the extra grains make a profit for the trader. In IFS
only two women, both traders, said they had received any
remuneration for their husbands crops: one women was paid 50
kobo (half a naira) once, while the other received 1.00
naira weekly.

Data from the general survey on trading indicated that
the weekly income for the majority of traders in both
villages was less than 20 naira. Only one trader in IFS and
three in Oluwatedo earned between 20 and 40 naira, and only
one trader in each village earned over 41 naira weekly.

I I

These figures are rather high, however, especially when
compared to income data from other parts of Nigeria.
Osuntogun estimated that the majority of traders earned less
than 20 naira per annum, while Simmons found the average
income per woman to be 4.15 naira per month.28

The growing (although small) number of women who both
farm and trade in IFS may be trying to increase their income
through diversifying their sources and increasing their
profit margins by processing their main crops for sale.

Wage Laboring

The insufficiency of family labor in both villages, but
particularly in IFS (where farms are bigger and more labor
is therefore required), means that there are wage employment
opportunities. In IFS only one male farmer (who owned a
tractor) worked for other farmers, whereas none of the
fifty-two male farmers in Oluwatedo worked for other
farmers. Most of the male hired laborers were immigrants
either from the north (particularly Hausa) or Yorubas from
Benin. A few were hired locally. In contrast, most female
hired laborers were local.

In IFS, three women farmers (out of eleven) and eight
of the nonfarmerss' reported that they occasionally worked
as hired laborers, thinning maize, applying fertilizer, and
harvesting maize. They earned daily rates of .50 to 2.00
and .45 naira, respectively. In Oluwatedo, on the other
hand, only two women farmers (out of twenty-five) and two
other women stated they worked as farm laborers for three to
five days seasonally. They earned between .50 and 4.00
naira, the actual amount depending on whether they received
a daily wate or had a contract to work by the acre.
Observation showed, however, that more women in both
villages worked as laborers than reported. Men and women
were hired for different tasks, and male tasks such as
tractoring were the best-paid ones. Furthermore, male wages
were higher than female wages for the same task. For
example, women were paid 30 kobo for applying fertilizer,
compared to 50 kobo for men.

In sum, as clearly expected by planners, men's income
is derived from agricultural production. Women's income
sources were more varied. Trading persisted as a first
choice despite the absence of a periodic market in IFS.
Women traders in IFS did not make gains from the variety of
products available to them to sell, and furthermore, they
also lost out when it came to profiting from the sale of
their husbands' crops. Women in the settlement did, however,
gain from the unanticipated availability of some wage
employment, which was not part of the original labor
calculations, though it should be noted their labor was not
equitably remunerated. As Roider observed, women were

"deprived of the markets and consequently of an essential
possibility for personal and economic development" 9
However, over the short term, through their own
entrepreneurship, women have compensated for the scheme's
failure,

LIVING CONDITIONS

The settlement was laid out, as noted earlier
according to a design drawn from another culture, the
Israeli moshav. The construction of the houses in widely
separated geometrical groupings departed from the nuclear
village area. Settleri houses were also smaller and less
flexible in design than other village houses, lacking space
for kin. The resulting lack of the extended family in the
settlement means that close kin are less available for the
day-to-day running of the household. Thus women do not have
access to Ithe assistance and resources of family,
particularly brothers or sisters, for help with farming or
trading or childcare. However, there were a few advantages
to the new settler layout.! The home plots were attached to
each settler's home, !and this reduced the time that the
majority of women farmers in IFS spent walking to their
farms. In IFS women spent between five and fifteen minutes
getting to their plots (except for one woman who shared a
plot with her husband, a thirty-minute walk away) compared
with a seven to forty-five minute walk for women in
Oluwatedo.

The amenities normally associated with urban life were
also planned for the settlement. Of these facilities--water
supply, electricity, schools, health and community centers--
only the school had been provided in IFS by 1977. A small
church was also built.! This was because "the planners paid
more attention to the directly productive parts of the
settlements and their financial implications than to the
social and infrastructure problems. Furthermore, time
schedules did not exist which would provide a synchronous
development of the productive and the social sphere." 30

Of all these failings, the absence of piped water was
the most serious for women. Water is needed for cooking,
drinking, bathing, washing, distilling, etc. The laying of
the pipes for the central water supply in IFS was to a large
extent completed by 1966-67, but the piped water system had
not been connected to alwater supply, and women still had to
walk to water sources. 1A water truck for the government
poultry farm arrives from Oyo and Ilora on Mondays and
Thursday during the wet season, and Mondays, Thursdays, and
Saturday during the dry season. If there is any surplus
water it is distributed to domestic units. The failure to
connect the IFS water supply means that women here have to
spend more time collecting water than women in Oluwatedo.
The distance to the water supplies and the number of trips
made daily is shown in Table 8.

Table 8.
Distance and Time Expended on Water Collection

Village Distance to Average Number Average Time
Water in Miles of Trips/Day Spent Daily
(minutes)

Oluwatedo

Dry season 0.75 1.6 60-90
Wet season 0.25 2.6 30-45

IFS

Dry season 1.7 3.3 120
Wet season 0.35 3.3 60

Source: Fieldwork 1977

In September and October when the rains reach their
peak, time spent collecting water in Oluwatedo decreases
dramatically as the village wells and the nearby pool fill.
In IFS women spend longer periods fetching water even during
this period. As observed above, water is also essential for
poultry production. In spite of the additional collection
burden imposed by poultry keeping, women did, in any event,
care for their own and their husbands' birds. But this was
made unnecessarily labor intensive and productivity was
constrained. Thus, the lack of a household water supply in
IFS also has implications for the directly productive parts
of the scheme.

The fuels used in nearby villages and in IFS were wood,
ogunso (made from the fibers of oil palm), maize cobs, and
kerosene. Because land had been cleared to create the
settlement fields, settlers had to walk far greater
distances to collect wood. This is mainly women's work, but
men in both villages assist with this task. Because of the
deficit, occasionally wood was bought in IFS. No wood was
bought in Oluwatedo.

Though water and fuel collection were quite labor
intensive (in fact, the second most time-consuming chores in
both villages), the most time-consuming chore was food
processing and preparation. Food preparation is a tedious
affair as cereals and other staples have to be ground,
husked, or pounded before cooking. Because of this lengthy
process, most Yoruba women prepare only one meal a day; the
rest is bought from traders who have specialized in ready-
cooked foods. This not only provides a livelihood for
traders but also frees women for other work.

The only food-processing technology introduced into IFS
was a large and ultimately ineffective maize processor. No
appropriate technologies were available to help women with
food processing. Privately owned mechanical graters for
cassava were in operation in the area; however, none existed
in Oluwatedo or in IFS. Whereas farming was "modernized" in
the settlement, technologies that could have made food
processing efficient for both individual use and sale were
not.

The layout and lack of social facilities contributed to
a weak sense of community in IFS. This sense of isolation
was reinforced by the fact that the Yoruba "consider small
villages only as producing supplements of greater
settlements and not as living spaces with any characteristic
value." 31

Added to this was a lack of community participation in
governance and the administration of basic services. The
cooperative never became a democratic, inclusive
organization. Over time, as the cooperative's service
functions diminished, IFS's links to government decreased
further. By 1984 it was relatively detached from any system;
the basic rules regardingisettler status, land rights, etc.,
were regularly violated. It remains today a series of
homesteads connected principally by commercial interests
overlapping with the surrounding territories.

CONCLUSION
AN EVALUATIVE OVERVIEW

The settlement schemes in Western Nigeria were seen as
a solution to the many social, economic, and political
problems facing the region in the late 1950s. Their main
objectives were to stem the rural-urban migration of young
educated male and female school leavers by establishing a
carefully planned, modern and mechanized farming system that
would provide good incomes. In addition, the living
conditions and social services (water, electricity, schools,
health and community centers) were to be an additional
attraction to the settler and his family, providing the
amenities normally associated with towns.

The problem of a high rate of settler turnover and
desertion has besieged the settlements from the start.
Roider estimated that between 1960 and 1965, 42 percent of
one-time settlers had left. A special report on the problem
at the time, however, did not lead to adjustments that would
have alleviated the problem. The data cited by Roider did
not indicate complaints specific to women. Among the causes
cited by both men and women for leaving the settlement were,
"too low income, too hard work and poor houses." 32 It was
clear at the time of the 1977 fieldwork that the development
design of IFS was poorly thought out and poorly
implemented. This continues to be the case. Though gains
have been made in production, the settlement is not
generally a popular place. This evaluation has given most of
its attention to women's difficulties and their greater
dissatisfaction with the scheme, but men faced many problems
as well. Since Roider's study the disaffection of settlers
has continued. During 1976 the number of settler households
in IFS declined from eigthy-four to seventy-five. Of the
seventy-five households remaining at the time of the study,
twenty-three (or 30 percent) were households in which wives
had chosen to live elsewhere. During 1977 this census was
reduced by at least one more household: the young widow who
was compelled to leave the settlement when her husband died.
Though departed settlers were not interviewed in this study,
interviews with the remaining women revealed failures of the
settlement to meet the needs of women and beyond that, to
provide incentives that would encourage settlers to remain.

Given the farm settlement scheme as it stands and the
high rate of settler turnover, it would be easy to conclude
that overall women have lost more than they have gained by
coming to live in IFS. It is, however, very difficult to
assess the gains and losses of women living in the
settlement as inevitably there are trade-offs that will vary
considerably depending on women's age and occupation, as
well as their views of the relative importance of economic
and social features. Generally, the failure to integrate
women's economic interests in IFS is a fundamental weakness

of the project. Women's position in the settlements was
precarious as they could not become settlers in their own
right.

The design of the scheme ignored the size of women's
farms in other villages. Instead women were "given" small
plots of land by their husbands. Women have to do far more
farm work than planners estimated, and they worked both on
their own account in' farming or trading, and on their
husbands' farms, a complexity totally overlooked in the
original labor projections. The scheme also omitted any
plans to accommodate the variety of women's traditional
occupations and their need for a source of income
independent from their| husbands'. However, IFS was
efficient enough as a vehicle for agricultural production to
generate surpluses for saie.

Indeed, women farmers gained in several ways. First,
they partook in the modern inputs of the system: fertilizer,
tractoring, improved seed varieties. Second, they were more
involved in decision making on their own farms compared to
women in Oluwatedo. This can be attributed to their higher
education levels and their inadvertent access to extension
advice. Third, as husbands supply more food to the family,
women in IFS play a smaller role (relative to their
husbands) than do women in Oluwatedo in providing for the
family. For women farmers this is an obvious advantage
because it means they have large surpluses for sale.

The absence of an organized market in IFS and a
marketing system linking IFS with the local marketing chain
of daily (mainly urban) and periodic (mainly rural) markets
constitutes a missed Iopportunity for women in the
settlement, as trading is typically most women's main source
of cash income in this area. However, despite these limits
in design the women on the settlement have set up a small
daily retaillmarket offering cooked food, bread, provisions,
and small amounts of farm produce for sale, which acts as an
outlet for part of their trading activities.

In addition, an! opportunity to realize profits from
selling husbands' increased maize crops has been missed
because the husbands deal directly with wholesalers from
outside the settlement. iFurthermore, chickens were given to
men but managed by women, with no water or other facilities
provided by the project. Given women's interest in trading,
and the market for eggs and poultry, this too was a missed
opportunity.

The central social services that were to provide the
settlement with amenities normally associated with the towns
have also for the most part not materialized. The lack of
easily accessible water[ for the household and for poultry
farming is especially burdensome for women as they have to
walk a considerable distance to obtain water, especially in

the dry season.

As the discussion has indicated, women's
entrepreneurship was sufficient to overcome this serious
problem and to find income sources over the short term.
However, over the long term the failure to allocate settler
status and land rights to women in their own right as well
as the absence of an organized market within the local
marketing system deprived women of a secure and reliable
means of economic and personal development.

Recent observations show a continuing downward spiral
for the schemes as living settlements. Though the women
were the first to leave, the men are finding living in the
settlement increasingly unsatisfying. They are creating a
system of commuter agriculture, continuing to farm their
plots while living in a nearby town.

DISCUSSION OF ALTERNATIVE DESIGN

Here we are not concerned with presenting a "shopping
list" of demands for women without consideration of the
goals of a settlement scheme or of the need to provide a
satisfactory economic return to public investment. It can
be immediately pointed out that so many families leaving the
settlement village is evidence of a failure to achieve the
goals of keeping educated young people--especially women--in
farming and of promoting agricultural production within the
design laid down. In this discussion of alternatives it is
accepted that there is more than one way of achieving
production increases, and thAt those ways which offer all
contributors clear individual incentives stand a better
chance of success.

Assured access to the means of farm production must be
the cornerstone of any project that aims to provide an
attractive farming alternative to migration to urban areas.
Moreover, if the new farmers are expected to invest in
higher productivity methods, that access should be assured
for a long time, preferably a lifetime. To their credit
planners of settlements have recognized this, as it is
customarily the practice to award life-long tenancies, which
are usually inherited. But this has been done only with
"male heads of households" in mind. True, women in
traditional patrilineal societies may acquire access to land
only on marriage, and they have no rights in choice of
location or quantity of the land. But this access is
automatic, and they normally have the right to continue to
cultivate the land if they are widowed.

Settlement schemes, on the other hand, presume upon
patrilineal norms by allocating (de facto to women)
"homeplots"--usually smaller than traditional allocations of
land. For the rest it is left to the husband to decide how

much more land might be placed under the effective
jurisdiction of a woman. But when settlement is accompanied
by improved agricultural methods and marketing systems,
there is great temptation for men to maximize their own
acreage in order to capitalize on the new opportunities for
cash income. How much land a wife receives and for how long
is then one man's private decision rather than the decision
of a collective (or an official planning unit) with wider
social interests in mind.

Ideally, joint ownership of a family holding or
separate equal terminal rights in land ought to be laid down
at the outset. But it has to be recognized that this may
not be possible for two reasons: first, planners are not yet
prepared to! countenance, it; second, village men may
successfully complain that this goes far beyond practice.
Yet some affirmative action is necessary to correct the
deterioration in women's land status or to compensate them
for it.

It is often suggested that women in the new settlement
might solvel'their' land problems by working collectively.
This suggestion is made without taking into adequate
consideration that there is little history of women doing
this. Women in most villages come from different
geographical areas (as they marry into the village), and
therefore they have itoi pool resources and work with
neighbors and friends as opposed to kin, a more customary
resource base. If men farm collectively they do so as a
family, and it appears that group farming works only in the
case of a family farm, with the head of the family
allocating resources and labor. During the first generation
of a settlement, both men and women are in the position of
newcomers in a new set of relations. There is no basis for
cooperation with spouses' kin. All are strangers. In
addition, working with one's own farm is preferred by all.

In the case of IFS planners were not hesitant to lay
out fields !and apportion them to different categories of
crops. If Ithey could do that, why not go further and
allocate certain fields (apart from the home plot) directly
to women by right of being a settler? If wives are unable to
cultivate the land themselves, or prefer to trade when they
are young, they should have the right to lease the land to
their husbands or anyone else. This would guarantee them
the right to regain use of their land when they wished, and
would put them on equal footing with men.

This design has the added advantage of affording women
a source of initial trading capital, which young pioneering
husbands may be hard pressed to find for them. This would
not only uphold traditional women's activities, but would
also provide the basis of their greater contribution to
processing and distribution of the anticipated greater crop
output. Such a design goes some way toward offering

security to widows, although how far depends on how much
land is deemed women's land. It needs to be remembered that
in this geographic area women turn more to farming as they
get older, leaving trading to younger women. Sons who
inherit their fathers' land might well offer some support to
their mothers' households (if they are separate) if this is
necessary. Or older women may in these circumstances choose
to continue some trading to supplement their incomes.

It is sometimes suggested that a sufficient remedy lies
in a widow being allowed to continue to cultivate her
husband's holding until the heir is ready to take over (and
then be allowed to retain residence and enjoy support). A
problem that arises from this design is that heirs often do
not want to use their land rights immediately, or that after
a sojourn in the city they may decide not to return to
farming at all. Settlement tenure regulations are often
strict. If the "holder" does not cultivate the tenancy, he
must leave. Under this policy widowed mothers would remain
dependent on male offspring and would be offered no security
in their own right.

This suggested reform raises another interesting
question: Who would inherit the tenure of women's farms?
Daughters or sons' wives? Settlement schemes usually
prevail on their tenants not to subdivide an inheritance
because of the fear of the emergence of nonviable farms.
This is reasonable. Also a daughter, becoming the wife of
someone else's son, should then enjoy the use of her
deceased mother-in-law's land. The point of this proposed
affirmative design is not which sex actually inherits, but
to establish secure access to land for women. Absolute
equality in land access may not be necessary in this case
because women have a variety of income-earning strategies.

Effective production in new communities (peopled mainly
by young persons just beginning their working lives)
requires working capital from nontraditional sources. In
IFS it became important with the hiring of tractors, the
greater use of fertilizers, and the use of hired labor for
planting, weeding, and harvesting. Women have an even
greater need for credit than men as they have less time to
accumulate profits (due to other commitments), while at the
same time being under more pressure to hire labor than their
male counterparts. Although technically women settlers were
not barred from the credit resources provided by the
settlement, in practice it was available only to their
husbands. The chief source of credit in a land settlement
scheme is to take a loan out on land that is registered in a
husband's name. This presents a significant difficulty to
women. A relaxation of collateral requirements, a system
for informing women specifically of what credit facilities
are available and for what crops, and the provision of
agricultural extension services (preferably by women or men
oriented to working with women) could encourage more women

to take up farming. One should reiterate here the importance
of women having the same opportunities as men to be included
as members in cooperative institutions. This becomes more
important as the value of the inputs provided increases.

Market and transportation facilities were inferior to
those in nearby villages. The encouragement of women's
processing and trading portfolio (or,of a new one adjusted
to the new crop mix) cduld entice to the village the type of
larger-scale! traders who visited the village of Oluwatedo.
Better transport could enable settlement women to take their
goods to the towns as Oluwatedo women did. IFS had a better
road (and in better condition) than the road to Oluwatedo,
but there was very little vehicle traffic (mainly taxis and
occasionally; mammy wagons). This oversight reflects the
degree to which the IFS design was narrowly centered on a
prime objective, raising food production to extract greater
food surpluses from the farm gate to the detriment of the
other objective of "creating an attractive alternative to
urban living." 3 An adequate transportation service would
be an additional cost. The expense would be justified as a
means of offering external economies to settlers' economic
activities. There is no reason to suggest that it would be
less profitable than the service available to Oluwatedo.
Indeed, given the greater crop output and the present
younger agel profile of women in IFS, it would be well
patronized.

An alternative or additional marketing option might be
the establishment of a "permanent" periodic village market,
as in Oluwatedo. There may be arguments that not enough
people are staying on the settlement to justify it. On the
other hand, it could be argued that the absence of such
marketing facilities (and this applies to the poor
transportation facilities too) is a contributing factor to
the departure and turnover rates, especially high among
women. Even at this late stage such expenditure might be
justified as risk capital (or, more accurately, "recovery"
capital). It is fortunate that this component can be added
to what exists without having to change other basic
structures.

With greater quantities of crops produced, the raw
materials for larger-scale processing and trading
activities were available. Whether women are able to or
wish to take!them up depends on women's effective access to
these supplies, and on incentives to process them. We have
seen that processing work remunerated in cash or kind is a
source of personal income and can provide initial trading
capital. Processing is arduous work, but it is profitable,
and the opportunity cost of undertaking it is low for very
young women with childcare commitments whose ability to move
into work outside the home may be curtailed. The greatest
opportunity for expanded processing in the settlement
appears to be through the initiative and labor of individual

women, and/or for individual families. Therefore, defining
the appropriate scale of processing units is crucial to
their adoption. The settlement as designed included
inappropriately scaled mechanized processing units that were
never used. An alternative to the settlement's mechanized
processing units would be lower cost, smaller scale
processing technology (such as the cassava grinders
available locally), which are cheaper and easier to use as
well as to maintain and repair. These technologies could be
used by individuals on a rotating basis. Further, some
payment for their use could even be extracted. In addition
to increasing processed surpluses for sale, the currently
arduous methods women must employ to process food for daily
consumption would be improved upon.

But if there were some gains in the economic sphere,
the social sector in the settlement village was thoroughly
disappointing. Because women depend more than men on the
social sector facilities, the problems created were greatest
for them. The absence of the critical services and the
promised amenities were certainly contributing factors to
women's discontent and the eventual departure of some. Of
all the items delayed, water was the most serious. The
planners appear not to have considered the economic
opportunity cost of the failure to meet the goal of the
village piped water supply. Women might have been able to
do more farm work, replace hired labor, or process greater
quantities of crops with the freed time. As water was
needed for both domestic use and production, an alternative
approach might have been to delay the introduction of
poultry on a large scale until the piped water was available
and to concentrate first on developing women's crop farming.

Another area of planning that would have involved no
extra social cost or inconvenience concerns the layout of
the village. The more common nuclear village would have
been a better tool to promote the formation of new settler
communities. Furthermore, the poor design of the settler
housing, with the lack of space for kin, may have added to
women's sense of isolation, particularly for young pioneer
mothers.

In retrospect it is easy to see that the basic design
of the moshav was not suitable for Western Nigeria. The
Israeli model was transposed intact to Nigeria without due
consideration of some essential differentiating
preconditions. But at the beginning of the scheme the
rationale behind the design was hardly questioned due to the
rapid and superficial planning of the whole project,
particularly as the planning had to proceed within the
framework prescribed by the politicians.

As it has been implemented, the farm settlement scheme
has failed to meet some of its.stated objectives. Not only
has it not incorporated and held the number of households

targeted, its contribution to the development of Western
Nigeria has been negligible.

The lack of settler participation in their own
governance, and the authoritative manner in which the
cooperative was run, further undermined the possibility that
IFS would become a coherent and viable social unit.
Democratic decision making should have been established at
the outset or phased in based on settlers' tenure. Both men
and women should have been provided a forum through which to
influence the settlements' economic and social priorities
(such as water provisions) and to promote the settlements'
implementation of planned features.

The basic trouble with the farm settlement is that it
was not related to any existing system, in the same way that
the market in the settlement village was not fully linked
with other markets.

Settlements have been artificially created and
supported for political reasons. Given the continued
support for settlements, a commitment to providing the
amenities promised in the plans and to improving the
position of women on the settlements would appear to be
minimum corrective policies. If change is possible in
settlements of more than twenty years' standing, a major and
positive reform would be a fundamental reassessment of
women's land and settler status.

ENDNOTES

1 Much of the data on objectives and project design
throughout this study are drawn from Werner Roider, Farm
Settlements for Socio-Economic Development: The Western
Nigerian Case, (Munich: Weltforum Verlag, 1971).

2 For a recent review of settlement schemes see Thayer
Scudder, The Development Potential of New Lands Settlement
in the Tropics and Subtropics: A Global State-of-the-Art
Evaluation with Specific Emphasis on Policy Implications.
Executive Summary. AID Evaluation Paper No. 21 (USAID,
Sept. 1984).

In recent years a move away from high-cost comprehensive
solutions not based on existing systems had been noticeable
in development planning. Planners had begun instead to work
toward small grass roots changes over time. At present,
approaches to development are undergoing major challenges
and the tendency to look for high-cost comprehensive
solutions is emerging once again.

3 For a study which includes women's experiences see
Jane Hanger and Jon Moris, "Women and the Household
Economy," in Mwea: An Irrigated Rice Settlement in Kenya,
edited by R. Chambers and J. Moris, (Munich: Weltforum
Verlag, 1973.)

4 Roider, p. 47.

5 Roider, p. 41.

8 Roider, p. 39.

7 Roider, p. 65.

8 Roider, pp. 50-51.

9 See J.S. Eades, The Yoruba Today, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1980) p. 6.
10 For a comprehensive reference on the effect of weed
control on crop yields see 0. Akobundu, ed. Weeds and Their
Control in the Humid and Sub-humid Tropics. (Ibadan:
International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, 1978); or
O. Akobundu, Weed Control in Cassava. Paper presented at
the 2nd National Cassava Workshop, Unudike, Nigeria 1978.

14 N.A. Fadipe, The Sociology of the Yoruba. (Ibadan:
Ibadan University Press, 1970).

18 See for example International Labor Organization
and Federal Statistics Division, Socio-economic Conditions
in the Ifo, Otta and Ilaro Districts of Western Nigeria,
ILO Fact-finding Report for Pilot Project for Rural
Employment Promotion in the Western State, 1970; A.U. Patel
and Q.B.O. Anthonip, Farmers' Wives in Agricultural
Development: The Nigerian Case, Seminar Paper, (University
of Ibadan,: 1973); Adeniyi Osuntogun, Rural Women in
Agricultural Development A Nigerian Case Study and T.C.
Adeyokummu, Agricultural Development, Education and Rural
Women in Nigeria, Papers presented at the Conference on
Nigerian Women and Development in Relation to Changing
Family Structure, (University of Ibadan, 1976); and M.S.
Igben et.al., The Role of Women in Marketing Gari and Palm
Oil in Some Parts of Nigeria: A Case Study in the Rural
Communities iof Fashola', Ife, Okene, and Enor, (N.I.S.E.R.
University of Ibadan, 1976).

17 N.G. Shields, The Relevance of Current Models of
Married Women's Labour Force Participation to Africa, Paper
presented at the Seminar on Household Models of Economic
Demographic Decision Making, (Mexico City: 4-6 September
1976).

18 In Oluwatedo, in six of the sixty households
studied the men had two wives (in one case the husband also
had one wife elsewhere). In Ilora, of the fifty-two
households, three had'tw6 wives. A study by C. Okali and K.
Cassaday, "Community Response to a Pilot Farming Project in
Nigeria" (forthcoming African American Issues Center Paper),
found thatlin two large settled communities northeast of
Ilora 36 percent of the men were polygamous.

Adeyokunnu, T.C. "Agricultural Development, Education and
Rural Women in Nigeria." Paper presented at the
Conference on Nigerian Women and Development in
Relation to Changing Family Structure. University of
Ibadan, 1976.

Akobundu, O., ed. Weeds and Their Control in the Humid and
Sub-humid Tropics. Ibadan: International Institute for
Tropical Agriculture, 1978.

., Weed Control in Cassava. Paper presented at
the Second National Cassava Workshop. Unudike, Nigeria,
1978.

Igben, M.S.; Famoriye, S.; and Adeyokunnu, T. The Role of
Women in Marketing Gari and Palm Oil in Some Parts of
Nigeria: A Case Study in the Rural Communities of
Fashola, Ife, Okene, and Ehor. N.I.S.E.R. University
of Ibadan, 1977.

Ilori, C. Economic Study of Production and Distribution of
Staple Foodstuffs in Western Nigeria. Unpublished Ph.D.
dissertation. Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1968.

International Labour, Organisation and Federal Statistics
Division. Socio-economic Conditions in the Ifo, Otta
and Ilaro Districts of Western Nigeria. ILO Fact
Finding Report for Pilot Project for Rural Employment

48

Promotion in the Western State, 1970.

Johnson, S. The History of the Yorubas. Norfolk: Lowe and
Brydone, 8th edition, 1976.

Mintz, S.W. "The Employment of Capital by Market Women in
Haiti." in Capital Saving and Credit in Peasant
Societies. edited by Raymond Firth and B.S. Yamey.
Chicago: Allen and Unwin, London and Aldine, 1964:
256- 86.

Okali, E. and K. Cassaday, Community Response to a Pilot
Farming Project In Nigeria, African American Issues
Center Paper, forthcoming.

Osuntogun, A. "Rural Women in Agricultural Development: A
Nigerian Case Study." Conference on Nigerian Women and
Development in Relation to Changing Family Structure.
University of Ibadan, 1976.

Shields, N.G. "The Relevance of Current Models of Married
Women's Labour Force Participation to Africa." Paper
presented at the Seminar on Household Models of
Economic-Demographic Decision Making, Mexico City,
September 4-6, 1976.